Game sweatshop
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A game sweatshop is a business concerned with making and selling accounts and in-game currency on MMORPGs. A game sweatshop is a building containing computers installed with online games (i.e. World of Warcraft, Everquest, etc). Laborers work on them on the computers to either collect in-game currency or high-level characters. It is referred to as a sweatshop since the workers make very little money. Game sweatshops make their business selling the gold or characters online through auction sites such as eBay. This is often referred to as gold farming, where the character is not "playing the game" in its usual definition, but is "playing" the game in an attempt to either create a better character, either for that player, or to generate virtual value to exchange for other things, virtual or otherwise.
While the MMORPG community is growing rapidly, another sector of the gaming industry is the online game merchandise industry. The practive of paying real money for accounts or money in-game is largely discouraged by games such as RuneScape. This is because of two main reasons. One reason is that buying accounts/money is against the spirit of the game; many people work for hundreds of hours to achieve high levels and obtain gold. Another reason is because of the risk. When a person buys in-game currency online, there is no guarantee that they will receive their purchase; unlike in real life, online games have no way of making somebody come through with their trade.
[edit] External links
- http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815
- World of Warcraft Gold - Price Research - Research on game currency prices from an independent source that does not sell virtual currency.
